The largest trend in consumer electronics is the growing popularity of wide video screen display. Such displays are particularly desirable for Digital Television (DTV) and High Definition Television (HDTV). These displays are used for television reception, computer monitors and as game displays. There are several types of such receivers/monitors in current use such as plasma displays, liquid crystal displays, and projection displays. Projection displays include video projectors which project onto the front of a reflective screen and internal projectors, which include lenses and mirrors to project an image on the rear of a translucent screen. Projectors may include Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD), Digital Light Processing (DLP), Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS), and Direct Drive Image Light Amplifier (DILA) image elements to convert an electronic signal to a visual image. In all projection monitors light from a projection lamp is directed toward the image element and then allowed to produce the image on the screen. Projection lamps are specialized to produce a bright image of uniform brightness. This design restraint has made the projection lamps quite expensive. Such a lamp commonly retails from $100 to $1000. A cooler, such as a fan, provides cooling during operation to prevent the lamp from overheating. In order to protect the lamp, all such devices further include a shut down protocol wherein when the power is shut off the cooler is still powered for a predetermined amount of time until the lamp has cooled. When there is a power failure the lamp can often overheat resulting in destruction of the lamp due to the fact that the cooler immediately shuts down while the lamp retains a high temperature.
Uninterruptible Power Systems (UPS) are unable to prevent this destruction. UPS include a plurality of rechargeable batteries and circuitry to sense a loss of power and use the batteries for power a brief period of time. UPS are commonly used in computer systems to allow hard disk drives to continue operation after a brief interruption of normal power, or allow the user to follow a normal shut down when power is interrupted to computer systems. The capacity of such UPS systems is insufficient to properly power down a large projection lamp. On the other hand, if a UPS has sufficient power to power the lamp, it will continue to power the lamp and the cooler until it exhausts its power capacity then both will stop, delaying but not preventing damage. Such UPS systems provide no means for monitoring lamp operation and allowing protection in the event of an interruption of supply power.